‘GIS has capacity for job creation, social projection’
The Graduate Internship Scheme (GIS) has the capacity to create jobs for youths and ensure their social projection in the country.
Dennis Chukwu, director of the project, stated this in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital, while addressing participants in the scheme, saying more than 41,161 graduates had benefited from the scheme since its inception.
Represented by Essien Akparawa, one of the consultants, said the breakdown of the beneficiaries included 68 percent males, 31 percent females and 1 percent for the physically challenged.
According to Akparawa, the graduates are trained in various skills in including Information and Communication Technology (ICT), community health, agriculture, construction, education, financial and empowerment to start businesses after one-year internship.
He explained that the intervention became necessary to re-orientate and redirect the minds of the youths towards independent ventures that would make them employers of labour, instead of job seekers.
“The career development and entrepreneurship skills training have been designed to help you answer the question of ‘what next.’ It is expected that from this training, those of you who are yet to begin plans for your future will do so without further delay,” he said.
Also, Dauda Madaki, who stood in for the project consultant, enjoined participants to take more than a passing interest in the scheme to fully develop their potentials.
Madaki assured that the programme has the tendency of moulding the youths to become functional entrepreneurs that would help grow the economy and create jobs for others.
He said with N5,000 earmarked as stipends at the inception of the scheme in 2012, the Federal Government has raised the bar to N30,000, adding such cash and training could go a long way towards improving the quality of lives of the youths.
It could be recalled that of the SURE-P programmes of the former President Goodluck Jonathan era, GIS is one of the schemes retained by President Muhammadu Buhari, as a stop gap programme to curtail youths’ unemployment in the country.